]]>I’ve recently installed OwnCloud 9 to sync my calendar and contacts between my Mac and Android phone. I didn’t want to use iCloud or Google anymore and OwnCloud promised to be a great alternative. The good news: it works really well. The bad news: getting the synchronization up and running is not always as straightforward as expected. I’ll share how I did it, along with some tips and tricks in this blog post.

Installing OwnCloud

Obviously, you will need to install OwnCloud first. There is lots of good documentation on this, so I won’t cover the installation here. However, if you’re trying to install OwnCloud at the German webhoster Strato, take a look at my blog post on how to install OwnCloud 9 at Strato (German only).

Installing the OwnCloud apps

In addition to the default OwnCloud installation, you need to install the apps for calendar and contacts. This can be done in the main menu (+ Apps) in the upper left part of the screen. It’s only a matter of a few clicks. Once the apps are installed, you’re already able to use the calendar and adress book via the web interface.

Setting up CardDAV and CalDAV accounts on OS X

To sync contacts and events with your Mac you need to create a new CardDAV (contacts) and a new CalDAV (calendar) account.

If you have installed OwnCloud in the root folder of your webserver, copy and paste the CalDAV URL into the server adress input field. You can find the CalDav URL for your calendar in the OwnCloud app, you’ve just installed. Click on the cog wheel icon in the bottom left part of the screen and make sure to copy the iOS/OS X address.

Repeat these steps and create a CalDav account to sync your calendar.

If everything works fine, the accounts show up in the calendar and contacts application on your Mac. You’ll be able to sync data in the same way as with iCloud and Google.

If you’ve installed OwnCloud in a sub directory on your web server, OS X will have trouble finding the proper sync URL. In this case it displays the following error:

Accountname/Password could not be verified.

To work around this, add the following lines to your .htaccess file to redirect to the correct URL (instead of “owncloud” enter your OwnCloud subfolder):

]]>https://www.jroehm.com/2016/03/owncloud-9-bei-strato-installieren/feed/5A simple guide to use OSC in the Browserhttps://www.jroehm.com/2015/10/a-simple-guide-to-use-osc-in-the-browser/
https://www.jroehm.com/2015/10/a-simple-guide-to-use-osc-in-the-browser/#commentsSun, 18 Oct 2015 17:15:23 +0000http://www.jroehm.com/?p=1048In this article, I’ll explain how you can send and recieve OSC messages with your browser. We’ll use an open source app to send OSC messages from a smartphone to the browser via Wifi. A little background Open Sound Control...

]]>In this article, I’ll explain how you can send and recieve OSC messages with your browser. We’ll use an open source app to send OSC messages from a smartphone to the browser via Wifi.

A little background

Open Sound Control (OSC) is a protocol for communication among computers and other multimedia devices. It can be seen as the successor of MIDI. OSC is very simple, flexible and provides everything needed for real-time control of media. This may not sound very exciting at first but OSC is incredibly useful for connecting devices and creating rich multimedia experiences.

Unfortunately, no browser can recieve OSC messages out of the box. We’ll have to use node.js to recieve the OSC messages and forward them to the browser via WebSocket. node.js is basically a simple version of a web browser that doesn’t have any graphical interface and can (only) execute JavaScript code (it’s a “JavaScript runtime”). One of the benefits of node.js is the availability of countless open source libraries, called “modules”. In our case, we’ll use the “socket.io” module to enable the communication via WebSocket. The WebSocket protocoll is neccessary for two-way, realtime communication with the browser. Traditionally, via HTTP, a client sends a request to the server, which then sends some data back. There is no way for the server to send data to the client without beeing “asked” first. WebSockets allow for messages to be passed back and forth while keeping the connection open. This enables real-time gaming or chatting.

You can also type in “node” and then drag an drop the “bridge.js” file directly into the terminal. This will run the file with node.js. The terminal will show “socket.io started” and a “heartbeat” from time to time.

Send OSC from smartphone to browser

So, now we’re all set to receive OSC messages but still need some kind of software or device to send OSC messages. For this purpose, we’ll use Charlie Roberts Control App to send messages from our smartphone to the browser. It allows you to build custom interfaces with buttons, sliders, knobs etc and send OSC messages over Wifi. The app hasn’t been updated in a while and is not super-intuitive but it’s good enough and it’s free. If you want a more polished, easy-to-use app you can go for Touch OSC.

Run bridge.js with node, if it’s not already running (see step 4 above).

Open “app.html” in the “web-side” folder within the OSC-Web folder

Move a slider (or whatever) on the Control interface on your smartphone to send OSC messages to the browser. The terminal will show the messages and the latest one is also visible on the app.html site.

]]>https://www.jroehm.com/2015/10/a-simple-guide-to-use-osc-in-the-browser/feed/3Social Network Vizualization using Facebook and Gephihttps://www.jroehm.com/2014/10/social-network-vizualiation/
https://www.jroehm.com/2014/10/social-network-vizualiation/#respondWed, 29 Oct 2014 19:49:44 +0000http://www.jroehm.com/?p=977This is the visualization of my personal ‘social network’, based on my Facebook friends in early 2013. Each colored dot represents a Facebook friend and each line between two dots represents a connection. In other words, these people know each...

]]>This is the visualization of my personal ‘social network’, based on my Facebook friends in early 2013. Each colored dot represents a Facebook friend and each line between two dots represents a connection. In other words, these people know each other. The bigger a dot, the more connections the person has within the network. The color indicates the number of connections from a cold blue (no connections) to a warm orange (many connections). Dots with connections attract each other and unconnected dots are pushed away. This creates the characteristic clusters. By looking at the people in each cluster, it’s really easy to identify the corresponding group. They are mostly based on location (cities and countries) as well as “common interest” in the sense of university, church or the like.

How did you do this?

I used a combination of the following tools to create the vizualization:

]]>https://www.jroehm.com/2014/04/resonate-festival-kunstler-nerds-und-cevapcici/feed/0UI Pattern: Natural Language Formhttps://www.jroehm.com/2014/01/ui-pattern-natural-language-form/
https://www.jroehm.com/2014/01/ui-pattern-natural-language-form/#commentsSat, 25 Jan 2014 22:09:46 +0000http://www.jroehm.com/?p=857I recently did some research on a UI pattern called “natural language form” and got quite excited about it. Although those kinds of forms aren’t exactly a new phenomenon, they’re pretty rare. In fact, there isn’t even a common name....

]]>I recently did some research on a UI pattern called “natural language form” and got quite excited about it. Although those kinds of forms aren’t exactly a new phenomenon, they’re pretty rare. In fact, there isn’t even a common name. Luke Wreblowski talks about a “‘Mad Libs’ Style Form”, named after the popular US word game “Mad Libs“. I like the expression “natural language form” used by Codrops and will stick to that name in this article. In my opinion, the natural language form UI pattern is very promising and offers a neat solution for some UI problems. This blog post is supposed to serve as a starting point for further exploration of this concept.

What are natural language forms?

Natural language forms are web forms that don’t follow the traditional label-plus-input-field-style. Instead, they consist of input fields that are embedded within a sentence, written in natural language. The user is asked for the same kind of information but in a narrative form. A quick look at the example above is enough to get the idea. The purpose of natural language forms is to make filling in a form as easy as possible and maybe even a little fun. It’s easy to see how a sentence, written in natural language, is more engaging than a traditional form. For one because it’s a novel concept and this fact alone sparks interest. More importantly however, a natural language form reflects the mental model of a user better than a traditional form. Completing the sentence “I feel like eating _____ .” feels much more natural than answering the questions “What kind of food do you want to eat?”. The former example feels like talking to a friend, the latter one is being questioned by a police officer.

It’s hard to say whether natural language forms perform generally better or worse than regular forms. Most likely the pattern is well suited for short and simple forms but not for long and complex ones. In any case, you should do your own A/B testing on the subject.

Update, September 2014: In September 2014 the folks over at GoodUI.org did some testing for www.prizegrab.com. Their results suggest up to 29% increase in signups with a natural language form. However, the tested form variation also included some other changes like fewer form fields, different styling for input fields, etc. Natural language forms are also included in the websites ideas for a good user interface.

Update, December 2015: Scott Sharp tested a natural language form for Embrace Pet Insurance and shared his results on GoodUI.org. His results suggest a +3.3% increase in conversions (visits to second step of quote process). However, the current live website of the insurance does not include the tested natural language form.

Design Examples

It’s pretty hard to find good and current examples of natural language forms. I keep on stumbling upon nice examples of the natural language UI pattern. It’s interesting not only how these forms look but also how they work. I recommend trying out the forms yourself to get an idea of what the user experience is like. Further, it’s worth to point out that the concept is not only being used for sign-up forms but also for filtering, searching and even programming.

Do you know of any other examples for natural language forms in a user interface? Let me know in the comments and I’ll update the list. Thanks.

]]>Although the video above is already a couple of month old, it’s still worth sharing! It provides some impressions of the media arts exhibition by the students of the Master’s degree course “Media & Interaction Design” (MID – hence the name) at FH Joanneum. The exhibition was held in February 2013 in Graz (Austria) and followed a circus theme. Me and my fellow students presented various projects that we had worked on, over the course of our studies.

]]>https://www.jroehm.com/2013/11/midnight-circus-exhibition-2013/feed/0Wireframing for Mobile with Balsamiqhttps://www.jroehm.com/2013/10/wireframing-for-mobile-with-balsamiq/
https://www.jroehm.com/2013/10/wireframing-for-mobile-with-balsamiq/#commentsTue, 15 Oct 2013 09:44:57 +0000http://www.jroehm.com/?p=785There are many wireframing tools out there. I’ve been working with Balsamiq Mockups for a few years now and it became my favorite tool for the job. The software is easy to learn, incredibly fast and offers just the right...

]]>There are many wireframing tools out there. I’ve been working with Balsamiq Mockups for a few years now and it became my favorite tool for the job. The software is easy to learn, incredibly fast and offers just the right amount of functionality for developing wireframes and low-fi prototypes. Balsamiq’s sketch-style controls help you to focus on content and interaction rather than getting lost in the details. In this blog post I’ll share some of my best-practices when wireframing for mobile with Balsamiq.

Update (December 2013): Balsamiq put a link to this tutorial on their website. Thanks!

Additional Interface Libraries

By default, Balsamiq only offers iOS interface elements. Luckily there’s Mockups To Go – a community-contributed site for interface libraries and templates that can be used as symbols in Balsamiq. From this site you can download controls for Android, WindowsPhone7, Blackberry, Nokia and others as well as various device mockups. Import the bmml-File into the “Assets” folder of your Balsamiq project and you’re good to go. Of course you can also use symbols in Balsamiq to build your own library. For more info on how to work with symbols check out this tutorial: http://support.balsamiq.com/customer/portal/articles/110439

Hide Device Frame for Viewing on a real Device

I usually design mobile apps within a device frame. It helps me to get the dimensions right and keep the context of use in mind. Plus, if I use the wireframes for presentations, they help customers and non-designers to better understand the design. However, when you export the Balsamiq wireframes including the device frames, they’re practically unusable for viewing and testing on a real mobile device. Keeping two files – one with the device frame and one without – is very cumbersome. Balsamiqs markup functionality offers a solution to this problem. Elements like comments, callouts etc. are declared as “markup” by default and can be shown or hidden via the “Show/Hide Markup” button in the upper right corner. In addition, you can define any other element as markup such as a device frame. Just right-click on the element and select “Treat As Markup”. If you then hide all markup and export your wireframes, only the UI of the app itself is exported and can be viewed and tested on a mobile device.

User Testing via LinkViewer App

In Balsamiq you can easily produce a click-dummy by linking your wireframes together. These low-fi prototypes can be exported as interactive PDFs and used for testing purposes on desktop PCs and mobile devices. For iOS there’s a simple app calledLink Viewer which is essentially a chromeless PDF viewer. It let’s you click through your prototype without any distractions such as menus, statusbars or other PDF-related features. This makes it especially usefull for usability testing.

]]>https://www.jroehm.com/2013/10/wireframing-for-mobile-with-balsamiq/feed/5A Socio-Scientific View on the Slackline Communityhttps://www.jroehm.com/2013/09/a-socio-scientific-view-on-the-slackline-community/
https://www.jroehm.com/2013/09/a-socio-scientific-view-on-the-slackline-community/#commentsMon, 30 Sep 2013 21:04:49 +0000http://www.jroehm.com/?p=725For a recent project I did user research on a somewhat special target group: slackliners. Beeing a slackliner myself, I already had some insights into the sport of slacklining and its community but wanted to base my work on a...

]]>For a recent project I did user research on a somewhat special target group: slackliners. Beeing a slackliner myself, I already had some insights into the sport of slacklining and its community but wanted to base my work on a more scientific approach. This blog post is an updated version of a paper (which you can download as PDF) that I wrote about my findings.

Introduction

Only little research has been done on the still relatively young sport of slacklining, so far. There are some studies that examine the sport from a physiological or physical perspective. However, not much is known about the people, who slackline. This blog post aims to provide a socio-scientific view on the slackline community, e.g. the demographics, skills and motivation of slackliners.

The information found below is based on a survey conducted in May 2013. An online questionnaire in English was used to gather data from slackliners around the world. The survey ran for 7 days and got a total of 423 responses from 26 different countries. The recruiting for the survey was done mainly through Facebook but also through my personal network and various slackline-related online forums. When reviewing the findings below, it is important to keep in mind that the people, who answered the questionnaire, were mainly web-savvy Facebook users, who understand English and have a strong interest in slacklining. Had I asked random people on the streets of Brazil or Japan, the responses might have been somewhat different.

It is also important to know, that this study is not a strictly scientific one. My intentions, when conducting the survey, were not to turn my findings into a formal report. I decided to do it anyway, because I wanted to make the data available to the public. I hope this will spark discussion(s), encourage further research and benefit the sport of slacklining.

DEMOGRAPHICS

Age

The chart above clearly shows that the majority of slackliners is in their 20s and 30s with 54% of slackliners being between the ages of 18-24 and 37% being between 25-34 years. Teenagers between 13-17 do not seem to be interested in slacklining.

Gender

Slacklining seems to be a very male-dominated sport. Only 11% of the respondents were female. When looking at the people, who rate their slackline skills “Expert” or “Professional” the number of women even drops down to zero.

The current World Ranking List (May, 23rd 2013) by the World Slackline Federation shows a similar distribution. It lists 12 women and 66 men, which equates to 15% female and 85% male.

When comparing male and female there are only a few notable differences. Spending time with friends and meeting new people is slightly more important to women than to men. Accordingly, women are more likely to go slacklining with friends than alone. Men tend to go slacklining more often and also rate their skills higher than women. Women prefer lowlining, men are drawn more towards other disciplines of slacklining.

ASPECTS OF SLACKLINING AS A SPORT

Experience

The majority of slackliners has been slacklining between either 1-2 years (43%) or 3-5 years (34%). They could be called the “slackline boomers” as they started slacklining in the last five years, in which the popularity of the sport grew almost exponentially. Of course by starting to slackline themselves they also helped to fuel this development. Only about 8% of the respondents have been slackling longer than 6 years. Those are likely the people who picked up on slacklining in its early days, through the rock climbing community.

­­

Only about 15% of slackliners say they have been slacklining for less than a year. Reflecting on this number and looking at the chart above, yields an interesting question: Is the peak interest in slacklining over? Over the next years, slackliners will gain more experience and the bars in the chart will slowly shift to the right. If there are only a few people who pick up slacklining today, what about tomorrow?

Again, the numbers here need to be viewed with caution. People who have just started slacklining might not be part of the various online communities through which the survey was promoted. Also the concept of being and not being a “slackliner” is not clearly defined. There are probably many people who like slacklining and have tried it a few times but do not see themselves as “slackliners” (yet). From my experience and observations, I’d suggest the number of people who have been slacklining for less than a year is between 20-25%.

Frequency of Slacklining

The survey shows that the majority of slackliners (53%) exercises the sport 1-3 times a week. About 20% do so 1-3 times a month and 19% slackline only 4-7 times a week. Most people who rate their skills “Beginner” are likely to exercise only 1-3 times a month or less, while “Experts” and “Professionals” are likely to exercise 4-7 times a week.

How often do you slackline on average?

Skills

How do you rate your slackline skills in general?

Almost three quarters (71%) of all slackliners rate their skills as either „Intermediate“ (36%) or „Advanced“ (37%). Few people consider themselves as „Experts“ (14%) and even fewer as „Professionals“ (4%). The chart above looks similar to the one that shows, how long slackliners have been executing the sport (see “Experience”). Obviously, when gaining more experience people also improve their skills.

However, the same caution that is true for the data about experience also needs to be applied here. There are probably more people, who think of themselves as “Beginners”, they just didn’t take the survey. Also the various terms are not clearly defined and rating one’s own skills is very subjective.

Disciplines

The chart below shows, how often people exercise the various disciplines of slacklining. The left part of the visualization shows the amount of people who rarely or never exercise the corresponding discipline. The right part shows the amount of people who sometimes, often or always execute the discipline. The answers “Rarely” and “Sometimes” were considered somewhat neutral and thus are grey. The answers “Never”, “Sometimes” and “Always” show a clear tendency towards either end and therefor are marked red and green.

When you are slacklining how often are you …

The chart shows that the most popular discipline is lowlining, followed by longlining and trick-/jumplining. Highlining is only done by a small percentage of slackliners (14% often or always), probably due to the great deal of skill and knowledge, that is required to rig and walk on a highline. Lowlining, on the other hand, can be done almost anywhere and pretty much everybody starts slacklining on a lowline. Longlining and trick/jumplining are almost equally popular. Comparing the disciplines preferred by beginners and more experienced slackliners shows, that beginners almost exclusively do lowlining, while experts are drawn to all other disciplines, especially low-, trick- and highlining.

ASPECTS OF SLACKLINING AS A (SOCIAL) ACTIVITY

Motivation

The chart below shows the reasons that motivate people to go slacklining. Neutral answers (“Neither agree nor disagree”) have been eliminated to clearly show a tendency towards one end. The right part of the visualization shows how much people agree the left part shows how much people disagree with the corresponding statement.

How important are the following reasons to go slacklinig for you?

The two most important reasons to go slacklining are “Being outside” (93% agree or strongly agree) and “Challenging myself and pushing my limits” (92% agree or strongly agree). Being with friends, relaxing and spending time with friends as well as general training aspects are also important. Only a small percentage of people do slacklining because they want (or need) to exercise for physical therapy or train for a specific other sport.

Spending time with friends and meeting new people rank relatively low. This shows that the social aspects of the sport are important but not the main reasons people do slacklining. In this regard slacklining seems to be different from most other sports. It is neither a team sport, nor an individual sport. It is both at the same time. Besides the line slackliners are with friends, on the line they are on their own.

Opinions & Views

Much like the previous visualizations the chart below shows how much people agree (right part) or disagree (left part) with certain statements about slacklining. Neutral answers have been eliminated to show a clearer picture.

How much do you agree with the following statements?

Almost everyone (99%, 1% neutral) agrees, that having fun is an important aspect of slacklining. On the contrary, only a small percentage (16%) of slackliners agree that competition is an important aspect of slacklining. In fact the majority (54%) disagrees with this statement. Most people agree that slacklining is a relaxed leisure acticity (77%) as opposed to an extreme sport (41%). However, 38% answered neutral when asked whether slacklining is an extreme sport or not. Probably because it can be, but for most people it is not.

Social Aspects

The chart below shows how often people are with friends or alone, when slacklining. The answers “Rarely” and “Never” have been considered negative and are shown on the left side. All other answers are shown on the right side.

About three quarters (74%) of slackliners are sometimes, often or always with friends. About 19% are always with friends, while only 2% are always alone. Slacklining is clearly a social sport but not as much as one might think. Over two thirds of slackliners (66%) are sometimes, often or always alone when exercising the sport. However, even when slackliners are alone, they sometimes (36%), often (26%) or always (4%) meet others and get to know new people.

When you are slacklining, how often are you …

Places

The chart above shows the places, which slackliners choose to set up their lines. Park areas within a town or city are the preferred slack spots with 95% of all slackliners going there sometimes (11%), often (56%) or always (28%). In contrast to that, only 14% of slackliners set up their lines in the mountains sometimes (6%), often (5%) or always (3%). However, the popularity of certain places changes with the skill level of the slackliner. Experts and professionals prefer mountains and urban spots to park areas. Obviously the preferred slack spots also depend on the area people live in. Most of the respondents live in the US and central Europe, where there are more mountains then beaches, for example.

Slacklife

What does the term „slacklife“ mean to you?

The word cloud above visualizes the most frequent words in the 262 textual answers, that respondents gave to the question “What does the term ‘slacklife’ mean to you?”. Common English words as well as words closely related to the term “slacklife” (e.g. “life”, “slacklife”, “slacklining”, “slackline” etc) have been excluded, in order to show only descriptive words. The five most frequently used words are: people (39), fun (38), friends (30), enjoying (27) and balance (27). The words “active”, “outside” and “pushing” have also been used several times. This corresponds with the reasons that motivate people to go slacklining (see “Motivation”). The word cloud also reveals, that friends and fun are the two main ingredients of the “slacklife”.

When reading all the single answers, it becomes apparent that there are multiple views on the term “slacklife” and thus on slacklining as such. Of course every person has an individual view on slacklining but most answers fall in one of three categories related to their skill level. Most beginners see slacklining as a fun backyard activity while having a barbecue and hanging out with friends. More experienced slackliners think of it more as a sport and for them, advancing their skills becomes important. Some slackliners also take the lessons they’ve learned while slacklining and apply it to their everyday lives. For example: living in the moment, finding inner and outer balance as well as focusing on one thing at a time. In this context, slacklining comes close to a philosophy and a lifestyle. For experts and professionals, slacklining is a vital part of their life and a way in which they can express themselves. They constantly push their limits and try to advance not only their own skills but also the sport of slacklining as such. At this stage slacklining is strongly connected to travelling and a lifestyle, in which freedom and self-fulfillment are more important than money and social status.

GLOBAL INTEREST IN SLACKLINING BASED ON GOOGLE

In addition to the survey described in the previous chapter, Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/) provides data about the global interest in slacklining, based on how often people search for the terms “slackline” or “slacklining”. The online tool can be used to estimate the nationality of slackliners, as well as visualizing the interest in slacklining over the last few years.

Nationality of Slackliners

The map below shows the accumulated search interest in the two terms “slackline” and “slacklining”. Unfortunately Google does not provide absolute figures such as the total number of searches. Instead the numbers are calculated relative to the country with the highest search interest (100). Countries with little interest in the search term do not show up on Google Trends at all.

It is hard to estimate how close the map reflects reality but from my point of view it is more accurate than the data gathered through the survey (see “Nationality”). Google searches are independent of language (the world “slackline” is used in all languages, as far as I know) and location (Google has 65% market share around the world).

Development of public interest in Slacklining

Google Trends also provides a view on how the public interest in slacklining has evolved over the last few years. In addition to that, the tool also calculates a forecast and helps to get a glimpse of what lies ahead.

The graph above shows the interest in slacklining based on the search term “slackline”. There are two things to note:

Interest in slacklining has been steadily growing from 2004 till today and will continue to do so, according to the Google forecast (doted line).

Interest in slacklining varies throughout the year and peaks over the summer month.

]]>https://www.jroehm.com/2013/09/a-socio-scientific-view-on-the-slackline-community/feed/7Making-Of: Fortune Tablehttps://www.jroehm.com/2013/09/making-of-fortune-table/
https://www.jroehm.com/2013/09/making-of-fortune-table/#respondMon, 16 Sep 2013 17:37:35 +0000http://www.jroehm.com/?p=695Today, the German design magazine WEAVE features a short article on the Fortune Table. That’s reason enough to write a blog post explaining some basics on how we created the multitouch project portfolio: Idea & Concept “Fortune Table” is a...

]]>Today, the German design magazine WEAVE features a short article on the Fortune Table. That’s reason enough to write a blog post explaining some basics on how we created the multitouch project portfolio:

Idea & Concept

“Fortune Table” is a project portfolio based on a combination of a multitouch table and interactive tarot cards. Each card represents one person and can be placed on the surface of the table. Virtual cards magically appear underneath the real card, each displaying a project made by that person. A card can hold a short description as well as photos and movie clips. It can be scaled, rotated and panned. The metaphor of playing cards is widely known and therefore an intuitive way to interact with the multitouch portfolio.

The project was first shown in early 2013 at an exhibition created by students of the master’s program “Communication, Media & Interaction Design” at FH Joanneum in Graz, Austria. The exhibition followed a circus theme – that’s where the fortune-teller and tarot card metaphor comes from.

Hardware

Fortune Table is based on the Samsung SUR-40 multitouch table with Micorsoft PixelSense technology. In contrast to other FTIR multitouch tables, the SUR-40 table does not include a camera system. Instead it uses sensors embedded into the LED glass panel to track contacts (finger/blob/tag/object) on the surface. The table is 42″ wide and features a Full-HD screen as well as a quad-core Intel processor.

Software

On the software side Fortune Table is based on a combination of various technologies. We used an app called Surface2TUIO to do some low-level stuff like recognizing the Microsoft touch events as well as the Microsoft byte tags and translating both into TUIO events via OCS. The Fortune Table app itself is an Adobe Air application written in ActionScript3 using the TUIO AS3 library. Since the app was supposed to display projects from a variety of people, we needed some kind of CMS system to enable everyone to submit their data. We did this by asking everyone to upload their files (text, images, videos etc) to a Dropbox folder. Then we wrote a PHP parser that indexes all files and creates one structured XML. When the Fortune Table app is started, the app loads all the neccessary files from an external folder according to the XML and creates all virtual project cards (based on a general template) with the corresponding content. Whenever a tarot card is placed on the table, the app recognizes the tag ID and displays these project cards underneath the real card. User’s then can interact with the virtual tarot cards.

Tarot Cards

The tarot cards are simple paper cards with a Microsoft byte tag on the back. We found that non-coated 300g paper works best in terms of speed and stability of the tag recognition. Each person received a set of personalized cards with a unique tag, their picture and contact data. Thus the tarot cards couldn’t only be used to interact with the Fortune Table but also handed out like regular business cards.